Managing electronic documents

ABSTRACT

This disclosure relates to computer-implemented management of first and second electronic documents, each of containing a sequence of content components. A user interface displays a first sequence of display elements to represent the first electronic document, and a second sequence of display elements to represent the second electronic document. Each of the display elements in each of the displayed sequences represents an individual content component or group of content components of the electronic document represented by that sequence. The first and second sequences are displayed alongside each other, with their respective display elements in an initial alignment, to allow a side-by-side comparison of the electronic documents. The user can automatically realign the sequences to a selected content component.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application claims priority to GB application serial number1708767.7, filed Jun. 1, 2017, the entirety of which is herebyincorporated by reference herein.

TECHNICAL FIELD

This disclosure relates to the management of electronic documents.

BACKGROUND

Within a computing environment, a user may have a large number ofelectronic documents. Increasingly, these can end up being stored innumerous places, such as local storage, possibly at multiple personaldevices, and remote cloud storage in a disparate fashion, e.g. spreadacross multiple folders (which might not have been chosen particularlylogically); distributed between multiple document management and storagesystems, attached to emails etc. Moreover, there will also often beexact duplicates of certain documents (e.g. at various storage locationsand attached to emails etc.), or versions with overlapping content, forexample different versions that are created as the content is edited,possibly by multiple users e.g. via a collaborative editing application.As the range of options for storing and sharing documents increases, itbecomes increasingly hard for a user to keep track of documents, or tolocate particular documents of interest. Existing solutions are mainlylimited to basic keyword searching of individual document repositories,and a lot of time and effort is often needed on the part of the user tolocate documents of interest, particularly if they are not stored in aparticularly organized fashion.

SUMMARY

This Summary is provided to introduce a selection of concepts in asimplified form that are further described below in the DetailedDescription. This Summary is not intended to identify key features oressential features of the claimed subject matter, not is it intended tobe used to limit the scope of the claimed subject matter.

A first aspect of the present invention is directed to acomputer-implemented method of editing a first electronic slide deck byreusing content from a second electronic slide deck, the electronicslide decks containing first and second sequences of slidesrespectively, each slide to be presented individually, the methodcomprising implementing, by a computer system, the following steps:identifying at least a second of the slides of the second electronicslide deck as a candidate for insertion in the first electronic slidedeck by identifying the second slide as having a target positionalrelationship with a first slide of the first electronic slide deck;controlling a user interface to display, to a user, a suggestion toinsert the second slide into the first slide deck; and in response tothe user accepting the suggestion via the user interface, inserting aversion of the second slide into the first slide deck, the version ofthe second slide being inserted at a position in the first sequence thatis determined automatically by the computer system based on a positionof the first slide in the first sequence such that the first slide inthe first sequence and the version of the second slide in the firstsequence have a matching positional relationship.

In embodiments, the computer system may identify a slide in the secondsequence as matching the first slide, and identify the second slide ashaving the target positional relationship with the first slide byidentifying the second slide as being offset from the matching slide inthe second sequence by a target amount, wherein the version of thesecond slide in the first sequence is offset from the first slide in thefirst sequence by a matching amount.

The second slide may be the next slide after the matching slide in thesecond sequence, and the version of the second slide may be the nextslide after the first slide in the first sequence.

The computer system may identify the second slide as having the targetpositional relationship with the first slide by identifying the secondslide in the second sequence as offset from the first slide in the firstsequence by a target amount, wherein the version of the second slide inthe first sequence is offset from the first slide in the first sequenceby a matching amount.

The computer system may identify a group of slides in the secondsequence as matching a group of slides in the first sequence, whereinthat group includes the first slide, wherein the second slide isidentified as a candidate for insertion by identifying the second slideas being offset from the matching group in the second sequence by atarget amount, wherein the version of the second slide in the firstsequence is offset from the group including the first slide by amatching amount.

The target amount may be predetermined. Alternatively, the target amountis variable. For example, the target amount may be determined by thecomputer system based on the slides of the second electronic slide deck.

The computer system may implement steps of: identifying a set ofmultiple slides, in multiple electronic slide decks, as candidates forinsertion in the first electronic slide deck, by identifying thoseslides as having target positional relationships with the first slide;identifying at least one slide of the set of candidate slides asmatching a slide that is already present in the first electronic slidedeck; and filtering-out the at least one matching slide from the set ofcandidate slides, whereby the at least one matching slide is notsuggested for insertion in the first document.

The computer system may display the suggestion in response to the userselecting the first slide in the first slide deck via the userinterface.

The computer system may determine a confidence value for the secondslide.

The computer system may identify multiple slides as candidates forinsertion in the first electronic slide deck, determine a confidencevalue for each of those candidate slides, and display respectivesuggestions for those slides wherein the suggestions are orderedaccording to their determined confidence values.

The suggestion displayed for the second slide may comprise a displayelement having a size determined by the computer system as a function ofthe second slide's determined confidence value.

A second aspect of the present invention is directed to acomputer-implemented method of searching a set of electronic slide decksusing a target slide of a first electronic slide deck, each of theelectronic slide decks containing a sequence of slides to be presentedindividually, the method comprising implementing, by the computersystem, the following steps: receiving, from a user via a userinterface, a user input individually selecting the target slide as asearch input from the slides of the first electronic slide deck;comparing the target slide with the slides of each electronic slide deckin the set to determine whether any of those slides matches the targetslide, so as to determine, for each of the set of electronic slidedecks, whether that electronic slide deck contains at least one slidethat matches the target slide; and controlling the user interface todisplay a set of search results in response to the user input, whereineach of the search results represents one of the electronic slide decksdetermined to contain at least one matching slide, wherein anyelectronic slide decks that are determined not to contain any matchingslide are excluded from the search results.

In embodiments, for each of the slides compared with the target slide,the computer system may assign a match score to that slide with respectto the target slide, wherein that slide is determined to match thetarget slide if the match score is above a matching threshold.

The computer system uses only selective information to determine thematch score. For example, the computer system may use only selectivecontent of the slides.

The computer system may determine the match score by comparing a limitedportion of content of the target slide with a corresponding limitedportion of content of that slide, wherein the match score is independentof the remaining content of those slides.

The computer system may compute respective metadata from the limitedcontent portions, wherein the limited content portions are compared bycomparing their respective metadata.

The metadata may be stored separately from the slide decks whereby saidcomparison is performed without accessing the slide decks. The may bepre-computed before the target slide is selected. For example, themetadata may be cached in a data store before the target slide isselected for use in said comparison.

The content may be visual content and the comparison may be performedusing visual matching.

The metadata for each of the limited content portions may comprise avisual fingerprint derived from that portion of content, whereby thevisual fingerprint is independent of the remaining content of thatslide, wherein the limited content portions are compared by comparingtheir respective visual fingerprints.

The limited portion may be a middle portion of the visual content of theslide, the remaining content being a top portion and a bottom portion ofthe visual content.

The computer system may assign a type to each of the slides, wherein thecomparison is performed in dependence on the determined type. Forexample, the target slide may only compared with slides of the same typeas the target slide, whereby only that type of slide is included in thesearch results.

The computer system may select, based on the type of the target slide,one of a plurality of available comparison modes to perform thecomparison.

A third aspect of the present invention is directed to acomputer-implemented method of managing an electronic slide deck, theelectronic slide deck containing a set of slides to be presentedindividually, the method comprising implementing, by the computersystem, the following steps: processing the slides of the electronicslide deck to autonomously group the slides into a plurality of groups,wherein the computer system performs the autonomous grouping byidentifying the slides in each of the groups as having related content;generating, in association with the electronic slide deck, grouping datain electronic storage accessible to the computer system, the groupingdata denoting the identified groups of slides; and controlling a userinterface based on the stored grouping data to convey, to a user,information relating to at least one of the identified groups of slides.

The computer system may control the user interface to display arepresentation of the electronic slide deck, the representation beingformed of a plurality of display elements, each of the display elementsrepresenting one of the slides of the slide deck, wherein at least twoof those display elements represent individual slides in the identifiedgroup, wherein in response to a user input via the user interface, thecomputer system modifies the representation of the electronic slide deckso as to represent all of the slides in the identified group by a singledisplay element instead.

The single display element may be selectable via the user interface toincorporate all of the slides of the identified group into a new orexisting electronic slide deck simultaneously.

The user interface may be controlled by a document editor executed atthe computer system to output a notification to the user in response tothe user attempting to delete one or more, but not all, of the slides inthe identified group, wherein the notification notifies the user thatthe one or more slides he has attempted to delete are part of anidentified group.

The notification may have an option to confirm the attempted deletionwas intentional, wherein selection of that option causes the documenteditor to delete the one or more slides.

The document editor may only allow deletion of the whole group ofslides, and the notification rejects the attempted deletion in thatevent.

The set of slides may comprise a sequence of slides and the identifiedgroup may be a contiguous run of slides in the sequence.

For each of the slides in the set, the computer system may assign amatch score to that slide with respect to at least one other of theslides in the set, wherein the slides are identified as having relatedcontent by comparing their match scores with a similarity threshold.

A match score may be assigned to each slide with respect to every otherslide in the set.

The computer system may determine the match score by comparing a limitedportion of content of the slide with a corresponding limited portion ofcontent of the other slide, wherein the match score is independent ofthe remaining content of those slides.

The computer system may compute respective metadata from the limitedcontent portions, wherein the limited content portions are compared bycomparing their respective metadata.

The slides may be identified as having related visual content usingvisual matching.

Alternatively or in addition, the slides may be identified as havingrelated text content using text matching.

Alternatively or in addition, the slides may be identified as havingrelated content using structure information in the slide deck.

Alternatively or in addition, the slides may be identified as havingrelated content by performing a cross-deck comparison of those slideswith slides in one or more other electronic slide decks.

Alternatively or in addition, the slides may be identified as havingrelated content by a trained model which has been trained according toslide grouping inputs from a user. The model may have been trained usingsupervised learning, unsupervised learning or a combination of both.

The set of slides may comprise a sequence of slides and the identifiedgroup may be a non-contiguous group of slides in the sequence.

A fourth aspect of the invention is directed to a computer-implementedmethod of editing a first electronic document by reusing contentcomponents from at least a second electronic document, each of theelectronic documents containing a set of content components, the methodcomprising implementing, by the computer system, the following steps:processing the content components of the second electronic document soas to identify one or more groups of content components, by identifyingthe content components in each group as having related content; andcontrolling a user interface to simultaneously display a plurality ofdisplay elements to represent the second electronic document, whereineach of the display elements represents a group of content componentsidentified in that document or an individual content component of thatdocument, wherein at least one of the display elements represents agroup and at least one of the display elements represents an individualcontent component, wherein each of the display elements is selectable tocause the computer system to incorporate the content component or groupof content components it represents into the first electronic document,whereby a user can incorporate a group of content components into thefirst electronic document without selecting them individually whilststill being able to incorporate individual content components.

A fifth aspect of the invention is directed to a computer-implementedmethod of managing first and second electronic documents, each of theelectronic documents containing a sequence of content components, themethod comprising implementing, by the computer system, the followingsteps: controlling a user interface to display: a first sequence ofdisplay elements to represent the first electronic document, and asecond sequence of display elements to represent the second electronicdocument, wherein each of the display elements in each of the displayedsequences represents an individual content component or group of contentcomponents of the electronic document represented by that sequence,wherein each of the displayed sequences has an order that matches theorder of the content components in the document it represents, whereinthe first and second sequences are displayed alongside each other, withtheir respective display elements in an initial alignment, to allow aside-by-side comparison of the electronic documents; and in response toa user individually selecting, via the user interface, one of thedisplay elements of the first sequence, identifying one of the contentcomponents of the second electronic document as meeting at least onealignment criterion with respect to the content component of the firstelectronic document represented by the selected display element, andcontrolling the user interface to re-align the sequences, so as to aligna display element of the second sequence, representing the identifiedcontent component, with the selected display element of the firstsequence, without changing the order of the displayed sequences.

In embodiments, the computer system may identify the content componentof the second electronic document as matching the content component ofthe first electronic document, thereby identifying the content componentof the second electronic document as meeting the at least one alignmentcriterion with respect to the content component of the first electronicdocument.

The content components may be identified as matching based on theircontent, based on metadata associated with those content components, ora combination of both.

The first and second sequences may be displayed in response to a searchinput received from a user via the user interface, wherein the first andsecond documents are identified by the computer system as matching atleast one search parameter of the search input.

The first or second electronic document may be one of multiple duplicateelectronic documents that all match the at least one search parameter,which are collectively represented by the first or second sequence ofdisplay elements, whereby the multiple duplicate electronic documentsare all represented by a single sequence of display elements.

Respective information about each of the multiple duplicate electronicdocuments may be displayed in association with that sequence of displayelements, to convey that the sequence represents multiple electronicdocuments.

The search input may select an individual content component, and thefirst and second documents may be identified by the computer system aseach containing at least one matching content component.

The first or second electronic document may be one of at least twoelectronic documents that the computer system identifies as similarbased on at least one similarity criterion applied to their contentcomponents, wherein the at least two similar electronic documents arerepresented on the user interface by at least two sequences of displayelements, wherein in response to a user input via the user interface,the computer system controls the user interface to replace the at leasttwo sequences with a single sequence of display elements that representsall of the similar electronic documents.

The at least one similarity criterion may be applied by determining anumber of matching content components across the at least two electronicdocuments.

The matching content component may be one of a plurality of contentcomponents of the second electronic document identified by the computersystem as matching the content component of the first electronicdocument; wherein in response to a user input via the user interface,the computer system controls the user interface to re-align thesequences again, so as to align another display element of the secondsequence, representing another of the matching content components, withthe selected display element of the first sequence, without changing theorder of the displayed sequences.

The computer system may display a selectable option to change thealignment of the sequences, the user input being instigated by a userselecting the selectable option via the user interface.

The display elements have uniform sizes. Alternatively, the displayelements have sizes that vary in dependence on the content componentsthey represent.

Each of the display elements in each of the sequences may comprise atleast some content of the content component it represents, whereby thatcontent is displayed as part of that sequence.

The electronic documents may be electronic slide decks.

Each of the content components may be an individual slide.

The computer system may scroll though the displayed sequences inresponse to scroll inputs received via the user interface, wherein uponreaching the start or end of the sequence representing one of theelectronic documents, the display element representing the first or lastcontent component of the electronic document remains displayed as theuser continues to scroll (i.e. “pinned” to the user interface), wherebythe electronic document continues to be represented as the usercontinues to scroll.

A sixth aspect of the invention is directed to a computer-implementedmethod of managing first and second electronic documents, each of theelectronic documents containing a sequence of content components, themethod comprising implementing, by the computer system, the followingsteps: processing the content components of each of the electronicdocuments so as to identify one or more contiguous runs of contentcomponents, by identifying the content components in each run as havingrelated content; and controlling a display to display: 1) a firstsequence of uniform display elements to represent the first electronicdocument, wherein each of those display elements represents a contiguousrun of content components identified in that document or an individualcontent component of that document which is not part of any identifiedrun, wherein the first sequence of display elements has an order thatmatches the order of the content components in the first electronicdocument, and 2) a second sequence of uniform display elements torepresent the second electronic document, wherein each of those displayelements represents a contiguous run of content components identified inthat document or an individual content component of that document whichis not part of any identified run, wherein the second sequence ofdisplay elements has an order that matches the order of the contentcomponents in the second electronic document; wherein at least one ofthe display elements represents a contiguous run and at least one of thedisplay elements represents an individual content component, wherein thefirst and second sequences are displayed alongside each other to allow aside-by-side comparison of the electronic documents.

Another aspect of the invention is directed to a computer systemcomprising: computer storage configured to hold executable instructions,and at least one processor coupled to the computer storage andconfigured when executed to implement any of the functionality or methodsteps disclosed herein.

Another aspect of the inventions directed to a computer program productcomprising computer readable instructions stored on a computer readablestorage medium and configured when executed to implement any of thefunctionality or method steps disclosed herein.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF FIGURES

For a better understanding of the present invention, and to show howembodiments of the same may be carried into effect, reference is made byway of example only to the following figures in which:

FIG. 1 shows a schematic block diagram of a computing device operated bya user;

FIG. 2 shows a function block diagram for a computer system, inaccordance with various embodiments of the present invention;

FIG. 3 shows an example of a filmstrip graphical user interface (GUI)for comparing slide decks;

FIGS. 4A-B show examples of how a slide may be used as a basis for asearch within the filmstrip GUI;

FIGS. 5A-C illustrate an example of how the filmstrip GUI can handlemultiple matches in a set of search results;

FIGS. 6A-C illustrate an example of how “runs” of related slides can behandled within the filmstrip GUI;

FIG. 7 illustrates an example of how the filmstrip GUI can intelligentlyresponse to scroll actions, as a user scrolls though the slide decks;

FIG. 8 illustrates certain principles underlying a slide suggestionfunction;

FIG. 9A-E illustrate a first example of a slide suggestion GUI;

FIGS. 10A-E illustrate a second example of a slide suggestion GUI; and

FIG. 11 illustrates certain principles behind filtering a set ofsuggested slides.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF EXAMPLE EMBODIMENTS

Embodiments of the invention will now be described by way of exampleonly.

FIG. 1 shows a schematic block diagram of a computing device 100operated by a user 102, and which can be used by the user 102 to access,view, create and edit electronic documents. The computing device 100 cantake a number of forms, such as that of a personal computer (PC), laptopor desktop; tablet device; smartphone, particularly one with a largerscreen (such as so-called “phablet” devices); virtual or augmentedreality (VR/AR) device, such as a VR/AR headset, or any other form ofcomputing device that is conducive to the tasks at hand.

The computing device 100 is shown to comprise at least one processor104, such as a CPU or set of CPUs (e.g. in a multicore processor) and,coupled to the processor 104, processor memory 106, which comprises amain memory accessible to the processor 104 and may also include otherforms of processor memory, such as a processor cache; one or more localcomputer storage devices 108 a (local storage), a network interface 110;a display 112; one or more input devices 114, such as a touchscreen,trackpad, mouse, image capture device for gesture detection, audio inputdevice for speech recognition, or other form of so-called “natural”interface etc.; and (in some cases), one or more output devices 116 inaddition to the display 112. Via the network interface 110, thecomputing device 100 can connect to a network 118, which is apacket-based computer network such as the Internet. This allows thecomputing device 100 to access one or more remote data stores 108 b(remote storage) via the network 118, and to communicate with remotedevices, such as a server or servers 122.

The display 112, input device(s) 114 and any other output device(s) 116constitute a user interface (UI) of the computing device 100.

A document editor 124 is shown stored in the local storage 108 a. Thedocument editor 124 is an executable computer program for use increating and editing electronic documents, such as local documents 126 aheld in the local storage 108 a and remote documents 126 b held inremote storage 108 b (documents 126, collectively). In order to executethe document editor 124, the processor 104 loads instructions of thedocument editor 124 into the processor memory 106 and carries outoperations in accordance with those instructions to implement thefunctionality of the document editor 124.

Within the local/remote storage (storage 108, collectively) each of thedocuments 126 is, in this example, embodied as an individual file thatis managed by a file system associated with the storage device inquestion. As is well known in the art, the file system is used tocontrol the storage and retrieval of data from the storage 108, whereineach file constitutes a self-contained, computer-interpretable unit thatcan be easily retrieved and moved between storage devices.

The local and remote storage 108, 108 b are both examples of “external”storage in the sense that they are external to the processor 104, thoughthe local storage 108 a may or may not be external to the computerdevice 100 itself (i.e. it could be integrated in the computing device100, peripheral to it or a combination of both). Typically, when thedocument editor 124 creates a new document, that document is createdinitially in the processor memory 106. That is, the document is embodiedat that point as an in-memory data structure. The processor can thentransfer the document to the local or remote storage 108 a, 108 b to“save” the document (automatically or in response to user input), atwhich point that document becomes embodied in a file stored in thestorage device in question. Likewise, when an existing document isedited, the document “opens” the existing file embodying that document,typically by copying at least part of its content into the processormemory 106 where it can be modified. The modified content can them betransferred back to the original file to replace the original content.As will be appreciated, this is a simplified description for thepurposes of illustration, and different types of document editor maymanage documents in different and potentially more complex ways. A briefoverview of these functions is provided to make the point that, whilstan “electronic document” may be a document embodied as a file inexternal storage that is managed by a file system, an electronicdocument may also be embodied as an in-memory data structure that onlyexists within the processor memory 106. Herein, an “electronic slidedeck” (equivalently referred to as a “presentation”) is one type ofelectronic document, so this applies equally to electronic slide decks.

Examples of electronic file formats include plain text (e.g. TXT, CSVetc.), rich text (e.g. RTF, the various Microsoft (R) Word Documentformats and other similar word processing formats), spreadsheet formats(Excel (R) etc.), electronic slide deck formats, PDF etc. As is wellknown, copies of a particular document can be saved as different fileformats, and it may be that the document is only tied to a particularformat once it is actually saved as a file, e.g. word processors,spreadsheet and slide deck editors may be able to save rich text in avariety of different file formats, which in some cases may be tied toparticular versions of the software. Before that point, when part or allof the document may, depending on the implementation of the documenteditor 124, only exist in the processor memory 106, the in-memory datastructure embodying that (part of the) document is generally closelytied to the design of the document editor, and can therefore varysignificantly between different document editors.

With these considerations in mind, the term “electronic document” isused herein to mean a self-contained, electronically stored piece ofcontent, typically containing text (character strings), image data or acombination of both, which is susceptible to interpretation by a human,preferably by rendering at least part of that content on a display, andwhich can for example be embodied as a file or set of files in externalstorage (in the above sense), or embodied as some other data structurewhich may be susceptible to rendering as a file in electronic storage,so that it can be managed by a computer-implemented file system. Adocument could be an individual file, multiple files, or it could bestored as something other than a file or files (e.g. in cloud storage).

The content can be user-generated, but in some cases it may beautomatically generated, such as automatically generated log files(trace logs, database logs etc.).

This disclosure has particular applicability to electronic documentscontaining a sequence of discrete content components, i.e. segments ofcontent that are clearly delineated by structural elements of thedocument, which have a clearly defined order within the documentrelative to one another. The segments may all be of the same type, butthis is not essential. The segments are such that they can be renderedin a consistent manner on a display regardless of the internal contenttype (e.g., fragments of a Word document could all be rendered assame-sized rectangular blocks containing an image or a paragraph oftext, or a table, etc. The system can allow for different sized blocksas well as identical ones. E.g., a mode may be provided, in which textportions in a document are rendered as display elements of substantiallyequal width, so that they can align in columns, but which needn't havethe same height).

Examples of content components include individual slides of a slidedeck; individual paragraphs in a text document; individual logs within alog file (such as a trace log) etc. where the structural elementsdefining the boundaries are, respectively, inter-slide boundaries,inter-paragraph boundaries and inter-log boundaries.

In the examples described below, each of the documents 126 a, 126 b isan electronic slide deck containing a sequence of slides. Examples ofdocument editors that can be used to create and edit electronic slidedecks include Microsoft (R) PowerPoint (R), Apple (R) Keynote,OpenOffice Impress and other so-called “presentation programs” withdocument editing capabilities etc. Usually, these operate on a WYSIWYG(“What You See Is What You Get”) basis, whereby the user 102 createsslides by manipulating displayed objects via a GUI so that he (includingshe) can see what each slide looks like as he edits it. Each slide hascontent, such as text (character strings), static images or even videoimages. For example, some document editors allow a video image to beembedded in a slide, which can be played out whilst that slide ispresented. Static images can be imported into the slides, or they can becreated within the document editor itself. Whether they are imported orcreated within the document editor itself, such images can berepresented for example as an array or arrays of pixel values, e.g.jpeg, bitmap images etc., or using so-called “vector graphics” where theimage is represented geometrically.

As is well known in the art, a presentation program displays informationin the form of a slide show, by executing an electronic slide deck. Inorder to execute the electronic slide deck, each of the slides ispresented (displayed) individually in turn, often on a large displayscreen or via a projector to an audience. Depending on theimplementation there may be animation effects which mean thatinformation from multiple slides is visible simultaneously during theeffect, and some presentation programs may allow a user to deviate fromthe order of the slides, for example by skipping certain slides. Theslides are displayed at a rate such that each slide is individuallyperceptible to a human eye, preferably for long enough that a viewinguser has time to take in the information the slide contains. Transitionsbetween slides are often instigated manually, though automatictransitions are also possible. A presentation program may have slideediting capability, or it may simply be capable of presenting the slidesbut not editing them—sometimes referred to as a “viewer” application.References to “electronic slide decks” should be construed in thiscontext.

Over time, users may build up a large number of slide decks. Often,users will create new slide decks by re-using slides from existingdecks. For example, a researcher may create numerous slide decks overtime relating to a particular area of research, which are adapteddepending on the length of a talk, the background of the intendedaudience, or as the research develops. As well as overlapping decks,often identical decks may be stored in various places, for exampleidentical copies in local storage, (shared) cloud storage, and archivedas email attachments which the user has sent to another user(s) orreceived from another user. This can lead to numerous slide decks withoverlapping or identical content, often stored in disparate places. Thisis exacerbated when slide decks are shared, for example to allowcollaborative editing or simply via email, or if the user isundisciplined about where he saves his slide decks, resulting in thecreation of more and more overlapping slide decks over time.

To this end, the described embodiments of the invention provide what isreferred to herein as a “SlideScope” system (referred to simply asSlideScope for conciseness, and equivalently referred to as a “slideprocessing system”). SlideScope is a computer system, which provides aGUI with various novel aspects for navigating slide decks in a simpleand intuitive manner. That is, the term “SlideScope” is merely aconvenient shorthand for a computer system configured with functionalityas described herein, and there is no significance to this particularchoice of name.

Although described in relation to slides of electronic slide decks, alldescription pertaining to slides applies equally to other contentcomponents of other types of electronic document. In this content,SlideScope may be referred to as a “document component processingsystem”.

Within the SlideScope GUI, individual content components (e.g. slides)are “atomic” in the logical sense, in that, at the GUI level, they arenot broken down into their constituent elements but are treated as the“smallest” unit of data.

However, alternative atomic units for slide decks are within the scopeof this disclosure. For example the same techniques could be implementedwith steps in an animation, or individual drawing elements as the atomicunits. And, of course, different atomic units can be used for differenttypes of document. In this respect, it is noted that all descriptionherein pertaining to slides as atomic units applies equally to othertypes of atomic unit.

FIG. 2 shows a functional block diagram for the SlideScope system 200,which is shown to comprise a pre-processing component 202, a slidematching component 204, a grouping component 206, a document searchingcomponent 208, a document aligning component 210, and a renderingcomponent 212.

SlideScope can control the UI of the computing device (214 in FIG. 2),and in particular the display 112 in order to output information to theuser 102, and can also receive user input from the user 102 via the UI214. That is, via the input device(s) 114.

Each of the depicted components of SlideScope is a functional component,representing part of SlideScope's functionality. This functionality isimplemented in software; that is by computer readable instructions(code) executed on a processor (e.g. CPU or CPUs) or processors ofSlideScope. For example this functionality can be implemented by thecomputing device 100 itself. For example, it can be integrated in thedocument editor 124, or implemented by a separate program that canexecute independently of the document editor 124, but which is able tocooperate with the document editor 124 where necessary to carry out thefunctions described herein. Alternatively, the functionality can beimplemented remotely from the perspective of the computing device 100,for example by a server 112 or a plurality of cooperating servers. Inthis context, the computing device 100 and SlideScope system 200communicate via the network 118 in order to carry out the functionsdescribed herein. For example, SlideScope can be implemented in on aso-called “cloud computing” platform, as a cloud service that isdelivered via the network 118. Alternatively, part of SlideScope can beimplemented locally at the computing device 100 and part remotely. Assuch, at the hardware level, SlideScope can be implemented on a singledevice or on multiple devices, in a distributed or localized fashion.

The operation of SlideScope, and various possible implementations, aredescribed in detail below, but first an overview of its operation isdescribed by way of introduction.

The pre-processing component 202 processes individual slides of theslide decks 126 to allow slides within decks and across different decksto be compared with one another. It does this by selectively extractinginformation from the slides, and outputting it in a structured way thatfacilitates an efficient comparison.

This pre-processing can, for example, comprise generating a visual“fingerprint” of the slides to allow visual matching. Fingerprinting iswell known in the art, so the details are not discussed herein. Sufficeit to say that an electronic fingerprint (also called a signature) istypically generated by converting the slide to a pixel representation(that is “flattening” the slide to form an pixel image), and thengenerating a fingerprint from the pixel values that captures the visualcharacteristics of the image in a way that allows it to be efficientlyand effectively compared with other fingerprints. One example of a knownfingerprinting technique that can be used is PhotoDNA.

In this context, the difference between fingerprints constitutes asimilarity measure (match score) that is used to assess whether slidesmatch. Other types of similarity measure can be used alternatively or inaddition, and various examples are described later.

The pre-processing could also comprise processing and extracting textfrom slides, for example to autonomously identify relevant keywords orphrases in the slide to allow text-based matching with other slides. Inone of the examples described below, the pre-processing componentclassifies slides based on their content (e.g. as primarily text orimage based), to allow the most appropriate matching to be performed bythat slide, or to lend greater weight to a certain type of matching.That is, it determines a type of the slide.

In the present examples, the pre-processing component 202 caches theinformation obtained though pre-processing (metadata) in a data store203 (cache), to allow searches to be performed on the cached metadata.

Alternatively, the pre-processing component 202 could be implemented aspart of an augmented data store in which the documents are stored alongwith this information (rather than in a separate cache), and theaugmented data store can provide this information to the other systemcomponents when needed.

The primary function of the slide matching component 204 is to identifymatching slides across different decks. That is, slides in differentdecks which are identical or sufficiently similar that a user wouldconsider them to have content in common.

The function of the grouping component is to identify slides within thesame deck that have related content, and to group those slides together.These can be contiguous “runs” of adjacent slides; that is subsequencesof the sequence of slides contained in that deck, as well as moregeneral groupings that do not require the slides to be adjacent. Thatis, slides which the user 102 would consider related and which he istherefore likely to use together when reusing them in a new deck. Thisgrouping can be performed autonomously by the system 200 withoutintervention from the user, though it may use information that the userhas provided previously such as structural information within the decksor predetermined settings set by the user.

As will be appreciated, determining when slides are matching, similar orrelated in this sense is not an exact science. In practice, a certaindegree of system tuning may be needed to obtain the desired behaviourthat meets users' expectations, by way of normal design practice.Moreover the criteria on which these are judged may be adjustable by theuser, to suit his own needs. As such, whether or not slides areconsidered similar, related or matching may vary depending on thecontext, but it will be clear to the skilled person when these criteriaare met in the context of any given system.

In order to determine whether a given slide matches a target slide, amatch score can be determined for the given slide with respect to thetarget slide. The match score is determined by comparing the respectivecontent of those slides. In some cases, part of the content can beexcluded. For example, where the comparison is based on the slides'visual content, a portion of the visual content (e.g. top and bottom10%) can be excluded (see below). The comparisons can be indirect,whereby the metadata, such as visual fingerprints, derived by thepre-processing component from the limited portions of the slides' visualcontent is compared to determine the match score. A pair of slides isdetermined to match if their match score is above a matching threshold—aform of “fuzzy” (approximate) matching.

Slide matching is used, by the document searching component 208, as abasis for searching the slide decks, whereby the user 102 can select atarget slide from a current deck and request the system to locate anyother decks that contain a matching slide. Slide matching is also used,by the document aligning component 210, to align visual “filmstrip”representations of slide decks, whereby a target slide is selected inone of the decks and the film strip representations are rendered suchthat a matching slide of another deck(s) is aligned with the targetslide. Slide matching can also be used to find identical/similar slideswithin the same deck.

The slide decks that are searched by SlideScope generally exist as filesin external storage (local, remote or a combination of both), and can beaccessed by SlideScope in the area(s) of external storage in which theyare stored. In the present examples, this is part of the pre-processingwhich is used to generate the metadata in the cache 203, so that themetadata can subsequently be searched to find matching slides withouthaving to access the original slides themselves. For example, the usermay nominate an area or areas of storage (such as a folder within a filesystem, an email mailbox, a shared data repository, such as cloudstorage, e.g. Sharepoint) to be searched, via SlideScope's GUI. Thetarget slide used for searching can be accessed from a file, or it mayonly exist at that point in the processor's main memory (for example,the user may be able to “drag and drop” the target slide of apresentation he is currently editing from a GUI of the document editor124 into SlideScope's GUI, without having to save the currentpresentation first).

Slide matching can be performed dynamically in response to the userselecting the target slide, or, where possible, slides can bepre-matched and data about the matching can be stored to allow searchresults to be returned faster. For example, SlideScope may pre-matchslides of any presentation files stored in the user's nominated storagearea(s), and record any matches it finds. For example, for each pair ofmatching slides, SlideScope may generate metadata associated with eachslide in a pair of matching slides, which identifies the other slide inthe pair of matching slides. This allows the matching slide to belocated extremely quickly when the user instigates a search. SlideScopecan implement a combination of pre-matching and dynamic matching, byperforming pre-matching where possible and reverting to dynamic matchingfor slides that have not been pre-matched for any reason. Thepre-matching can be implemented as a background process that runs“silently” in a manner that is essentially invisible to the user. Asanother example, even if slides are not pre-matched, the information toenable the matching (e.g. fingerprints etc.) can be derived by thepre-processing component in advance, and stored in association with theslides (although this could also be derived dynamically in other cases,where necessary).

In the present examples, slides are not searched from their originallocations, rather all searching occurs within the pre-processed metadatain the cache 203. This allows much faster searching.

It is noted however that, whilst the pre-processing component 202 can bebeneficial in terms of providing faster searches/matching, it is notessential. The required information could be determined dynamicallyinstead.

Moreover, it is not necessarily essential for the system to derivemetadata from the content of the slides in order to link them together(whether through pre-processing or otherwise).

If SlideScope has no information about user behaviour, i.e. nothing thatsignals that the user made use of slide N from deck A when creating deckB (for example), then it can compare their content to find similarslides and make an assumption that those represent reuse of content. Itcan also infer the ordering of reuse from timestamps, for example byassuming that a slide in a later deck will have come from an earlierone. In this context, deriving metadata from the content, such as visualfingerprints for visual matching, is a useful way of identifying relatedslides. As these relationships are inferred, the system builds up agraph embodying these inter-slide relationships.

However, if the system is able to capture copy-paste or save actions (orsimilar) as behaviours, this could also support a similar userexperience, with less pre-processing overhead and with less need toderive metadata from the content of the slides. The graph could insteadbe build up by tracking such actions (or using a combination of contentcomparison and action tracking).

By recording information that signals that, say, the user made use ofslide N from deck A when creating deck B, the system can keep track ofthe relationships between slides with less or no pre-processingoverhead. For example, if the system can capture a user action ofcopying content from one document to another, it can link the relevantslides directly, and (where appropriate) could still retain the linkagebetween the source and destination slides when the user changes thingsafter pasting. There are other actions too, such as save-as, oroperating system level file copying, or emailing, etc. that could betracked in a similar manner to infer relationships between slides tobuild up the graph of inter-slide relationships. Such tracking could beassisted by per-slide identifiers (slide IDs) that can be used to keeptrack of the links between slides. It could be the document editor 124itself that is configured to track and record these actions using theappropriate slide identifier. With those linkages directly represented(in the document, or elsewhere), the system wouldn't have to spend asmuch time (re)building the graph.

Whether the graph of inter-slide relationships is built up based onvisual or other content comparisons, by tracking user actions, by anyother means or any combination thereof, this can be performed at thepre-processing stage. However, for the absolute avoidance of doubt, itis noted once again that pre-processing is not essential, and that theysystem can therefore be implemented without pre-processing or withdiffering levels of pre-processing. Any operation that is describedherein as being part of the pre-processing stage, such as the derivingof links between slides, can be implemented dynamically if and when itis needed instead, for example when a user requests a search or triggersa recommendation (see below).

Slide grouping allows the groups of related slides to be manipulatedeasily, without the user having to individually select those slides. Forexample, a group of slides identified as having related content can beincorporated into another deck (e.g. a deck the user is currentlyediting, or a new deck created at that point) in one go. Slide groupingcan also be used in rendering the filmstrip view, by collapsing runswithin each filmstrip (see below). Slide grouping can also be used fornavigation, e.g., if a slide or run is also “linked” to (i.e. determinedto be related to) one or more appendix slides, a quick action could beprovided to hop between the body slide(s) and the corresponding appendixslide(s) automatically.

As noted, the matching, both to determine which slides to align acrossdecks and which slides make up runs, can be based on approximate visualcomparisons but other mechanisms could be used alternatively or inaddition, such as text matching or a combination of text and visual. Allthe techniques described herein in relation to detecting matching slidescan be applied equally to detecting groups of slides, and vice versa.

1. Slide-Based Searching

It is often the case that the same content is duplicated multiple timesin a data repository, such as in multiple files. In particular, the sameor very similar slides may be used across multiple decks. This mightresult from copy-paste, ‘insert’, or file ‘save as’ user actions.However, it is often difficult for users to keep track of or revisit howcontent has propagated across files, and this might be especiallyproblematic in shared repositories where multiple users work with thesame content. Having access to this information would be useful for anumber of scenarios, including updating content across multiple files,collating content on the same topic, finding all the versions of a file,or inspecting how a piece of content has been interpreted or describedover multiple files.

An important feature of SlideScope is that an individual slide can beused to trigger a file search. That is, SlideScope can use individualslides to search for other files that also contain matching slides, i.e.slides with matching content. This can be done by capturing a visualfingerprint of every slide in a corpus of decks. When a slide isselected to initiate a search, slides that are visually similar arereturned, being presented as part of the file they are in (using afilmstrip view—see section 2 below).

To limit the effects of the same content being presented in slide decksthat use different layouts, SlideScope limits characteristics of theslides used for searching such that similar content is found. Forexample, where visual matching is used as a basis for searching, some ofthe visual content of each slide can be discarded. For example, a simpleapproach ignores the top and bottom 10% of the slide when analysingslide similarity, as different layouts often disproportionately affectthese areas within a deck. For example, the visual fingerprint can begenerated from only the image data remaining once the top and bottom 10%have been excluded. Ignoring formatting means that variations on the‘same’ (i.e. matching) data components can be found.

Alternatives include stripping all styles (removing backgrounds,reducing all text to the same typeface, removing colours from diagrams,etc.) and then producing the fingerprints; or normalising the size ofdiagrams or images on slides such that the same figure represented indifferent locations/sizes on different slides will be recognised as thesame.

The text across the slides can also be processed to identify text thatis unique to particular slides, for example by filtering-out words orphrases that appear across all of the slides or many of the slides. Thisis essentially a binary weighting, where text is either included ordiscarded based on the number of slides it appears in. This can begeneralized, whereby words or phrases can be assigned a range of weightvalues in dependence on how many slides they appear in, wherewords/phrases that only appear in a smaller number of slides are given ahigher weighting than those which appear in a larger number of slides.This can be extended to cross-deck comparison, to give a greaterweighting to text that is considered unique to a particular deck. Thisallows words that are very common across decks to be discarded or givena low weighting, as they are unlikely to be useful when it comes tomatching up slides.

Slides may also have notes attached. These are generally not visible toan audience when the slides are presented, but are visible to thepresenter. These may or may not be used in matching slides, depending onthe implementation. Whether or not to use notes may be the user'schoice.

The UI presents slides in the context of the decks they form part of, asdescribed in the next section.

2. Filmstrip View

SlideScope can displays multiple versions of the “same” slide decksimultaneously, in parallel to one another, making it easy to seedifferences and divergence. The system allows users to line thesestreams up using content that is common between them, thereby helpinghighlight differences. The user aligns these streams by selecting anindividual slide in one of the decks, and the other decks are aligned tothis selected slide.

There are situations when a user has a collection of many instances ofvery similar data, and is interested in exploring the differencesbetween those data sets. One example is different versions of somedocument (which may include variations across time, as the documentevolves, and variations across location, where the document is editedfor different purposes). When creating a new version, the user may wishto look at the differences between all of the items in this collection,to ensure that the most appropriate material is collected for this newinstance.

FIG. 3 shows one example of a filmstrip GUI rendered by SlideScope, inwhich a plurality of slide decks is represented. Each of the slidesdecks is represented by a one-dimensional array (304 a-d) of discrete(individually discernible), uniformly spaced cells 306, which are ofsubstantially equal width and height in this example, thereby forming atwo dimensional grid 302 in the example of FIG. 3 (each array being arow of the grid 302). Each row 304 a-d (“filmstrip”) represents one ofthe slide decks, and each cell 306 in that array (filmstrip segment)constitutes a display element representing an individual slide of thatdeck. That is, SlideScope displays decks in a filmstrip view, with onerow per deck and one cell per slide. In this example, the rows runhorizontally, with slides displayed from left to right in the order theyappear in the slide deck (alternatively, each slide deck could berepresented by a column of the grid 302 running vertically, forexample). Thus, each filmstrip 304 a-d representing a deck is formed ofa sequence of discrete, uniform filmstrip segments with the sequencesdisplayed alongside each other to allow a side-by-side comparison of thedecks. For each filmstrip, every cell between the first and last slideis populated, i.e. every one of those cells represents an individualslide (or group of slides—see below), however the GUI is scrollable andthis may not be the case once the user has scrolled to reach the startor end of one or more of the decks, depending on how they are aligned(see below).

Note: within a slide deck or across different slide decks beingcompared, slides may have different aspect ratios. In this case, thecells 306 may be different sizes to represent the different sizedslides. The cells may still be uniformly spaced so that the cells 306across the decks being compared remain vertically aligned, however thisis not essential: the cells needn't be the same size (even within onefilmstrip). When there's a match, SlideScope aligns the left edges ofthe matching slides, such that those slides align, and neighbouringslides are just drawn in the appropriate adjacent positions, and needn'talign with anything at all in filmstrips above and below.

For example, where (say) text documents are rendered using filmstripview, where each document is represented as a vertical filmstrip, thecells may have different heights to accommodate (say) paragraphs, orother document components, of different lengths. Thus a document isrepresented as a vertical filmstrip of rectangles of the same width butdiffering heights. After a search, the system aligns e.g. the top,middle, or matching word within the sub-document rectangle, of therectangle that matches, and those may be the only rectangles thatdirectly align in any way; the remainder of the document rectanglesappear above and below these matching ones, occupying as much screenheight as they need.

In the interests of conciseness, a filmstrip representing a deck issometimes just referred to as a deck, and likewise sometimes thefilmstrip segment representing a slide is just referred to as a slide.It will be clear in context what is being referred to.

Each filmstrip segment comprises a visual representation of the slide itrepresents. That is, a version of the slide is displayed within eachfilmstrip segment, so the user can see what each slide looks like. Thatis, image data of the slide itself is displayed to render therepresentation of the slide.

As shown on the left hand side, information 308 about each slide deck isdisplayed in association with the corresponding filmstrip. This caninclude, for example: a name of the slide deck, which can for example bederived from the file name or from its content, for example from a titleslide, a location at where the deck is stored or other information abouthow it has been obtained (for example an address in local or remotestorage, or an identifier of a mailbox and email where the deck is anemail attachment, as for filmstrip 304 d), and information about whenthe slide deck was created and/or edited, such as a time, date and userID for the creating/editing user.

For email attachments, the GUI may also indicate whether those are sentor received attachments.

Duplicate decks, that is different decks (e.g. different files) forwhich all of the slides match, are not represented twice. Instead,duplicate decks are represented by a single filmstrip. That is, exactduplicate decks are “collapsed” into a single filmstrip. This may beconveyed to the user 102, for example by highlighting their differentnames and/or storage locations. By way of example, filmstrip 304 a isshown to represent two duplicate decks, one in local storage 108 a andone in remote storage 108 b.

SlideScope collapses only identical decks in this way to avoid hidingany information from the user: if several instances of a file arebit-identical, one representation can be shown, along with informationthat this file exists in several locations, without any loss ofinformation; if the files differ even slightly, they are not the samefile, therefore the system needs to make it obvious to the user thatthey are not the same.

A somewhat comparable but nevertheless distinct concept is one of slide“neighbourhoods”. Where SlideScope can identify a number of decks asbeing sufficiently similar, but not identical, (referred to herein as a“neighbourhood”) it could compress their representation into a singlerow instead of taking up a large amount of the vertical screen space.This is made clear to the user, and preferably there is a UI optionprovided to collapse or un-collapse an identified neighbourhood, so thatthe user can still see all of the available information should he wishto do so. The sequence of display elements representing a collapsedneighbourhood, in the collapsed neighbourhood mode of the UI, occupiesan area of the display that is less than the total area of the displayoccupied by the multiple sequences representing the multiple decks inthat neighbourhood individually in the un-collapsed neighbourhood modeof the UI.

Neighbourhoods do incorporate the notion of fuzzy matching, and thecollapsing of a set of decks into a neighbourhood is something the userwould have more control of than identical files.

For example, if the user has identical copies of FileA_v1.pptx inlocations X, Y, Z, and a similar copy of FileA_v2.pptx in X, with adifferent file FileB_v1.pptx in Y, then the UI would show filmstrips forFileA_v1, FileA_v2, FileB_v1 with an indication that the first of thosehas multiple instances. Neighbourhoods resulting from this would beFileA_v1+FileA_V2 and FileB_v1—i.e., a neighbourhood containing twofiles (not four) and one containing a single file. As will be readilyapparent, this also applies to other document types.

A possible measure of deck similarity that can be used to identify aneighbourhood is the number of matching slides in those decks. Oneimplication of this is that it gets a different set of matches to awhole document comparison—consider the following example: a document has“A” on one page/slide and “B” on another, and a second document has “AB”on one page. A whole document match would say that they are good matchessince both documents contain “A” and “B” whereas a sub-document unitmatch would suggest otherwise, since the identical text does not appearon any individual slide/page.

In order to reuse slides, a creation area 310 of the GUI is provided,into which the user can “drag and drop” a slide from the filmstrips tocreate a new deck containing a copy of that slide. The user may be ableto manually select multiple slides to drag into the creation area 310simultaneously, e.g. by dragging over them with a cursor. Moreover,mechanisms are described below that allow a user to incorporateidentified groups of multiple slides, such as runs, into a new orexisting deck without having to select them manually.

Searching/Alignment in Filmstrip View

As noted, SlideScope allows a user to select a particular slide as aninput for searching, and SlideScope will (a) select just those deckswhich contain that slide or a close visual match and (b) align the deckssuch that the best matching variants of that selected slide are alignedvertically. This view shows the selected content in context,highlighting the differences around it.

To this end, a search area 312 of the GUI is also provided, into whichthe user can drag and drop individual slides from the filmstrips inorder to select that slide as a search input (target slide).

FIG. 4A shows an example, in which filmstrip segment 306T is dragged anddropped into the search area 312 to select the slide it represents as atarget slide. As illustrated in FIG. 4B, this causes SlideScope tosearch for any other decks containing at least one matching slide. Theresults of the search are outputted as filmstrips 404 a-d, wherein eachfilmstrip represents one deck determined to contain at least onematching slide. Decks that do not contain any matching slide areexcluded from the search results. As shown in FIG. 4B, the filmstripsegments matching the target slide are vertically aligned.

Although not shown in FIG. 4B, the filmstrip 304 a representing the deckfrom which the target slide was selected may also be displayed alongwith the search results for comparison, with the target slide 306T infilmstrip 304 a being similarly aligned with the slides that match it.Indeed, this deck will simply be returned as a search result unless thesystem is configured to specifically exclude the deck containing thetarget slide from the search.

At any time, the user can select a different slide to instigate a newsearch, causing the GUI to be updated and realigned.

SlideScope also lets the user 102 provide other search parameters, suchas an external source for the alignment operation, for example byproviding a text string to search for an external image. This results ina similarly aligned display, which can be explored in the ways describedabove.

Decks that are excluded from the search results are not represented,with the exception that the user can “pin” a slide deck, by selecting anassociated pin icon (314, FIG. 3) so that it remains on the GUI even ifit does not match the current search parameters. However, these are notpart of the search results, and may be visually distinguished from themon the GUI.

The user can scroll through the filmstrips to see different parts, andthe alignment of the filmstrips is maintained as the user scrollsthrough.

As noted above, the user can nominate areas of storage on whichSlideScope operates. SlideScope will only show decks from thesenominated areas. An option 322 is provided in this example, via whichthe user can instigate a drop down menu to change the storage areanominations.

Multiple Matches

There may be multiple matching slides within a slide deck. SlideScopealigns to the best match but shows where others are, includingindicating if there are matches off screen.

FIG. 5A illustrates an example of this, in which indicators 502 a, 502 bare displayed at or near the end of a filmstrip if there is a matchingslide off screen, at the end of the filmstrip corresponding to theoff-screen slide. That is, in order to convey the direction in which theuser needs to scroll to locate the off-screen slide(s).

SlideScope may provide a re-alignment mechanism which lets the user hopto another one of these matches to show that in the context of the otherdecks. Each of the indicators 502 a, 502 b is selectable toautomatically “hop” to e.g. the closest matching slide indicated by it,or to the next-best match.

By way of example, FIG. 5B shows an example of a possible behaviour whenindicator 502 b at the right end of filmstrip 404 c is selected. FIG. 5Bshows the GUI at four different points in time as an animation effect isrendered in response, whereby filmstrip 404 c moves horizontally fromright to left relative to the other filmstrips 404 a, 404 c-d, until thenext matching slide in filmstrip 404 c becomes aligned with the matchingslides of the remaining filmstrips. The animation may be helpful for theuser in understanding the behaviour of the system, however it is notessential, and in this respect it is noted that references to “moving” afilmstrip relative to another filmstrip (or similar) do not necessarilyimply animation—the filmstrip can be moved by changing the position ofits cells relative to the cells of the other filmstrip instantaneously.This is also illustrated in FIG. 5C, in which the two matching slides indeck 404 c are labelled 532 and 534 respectively. Slide 534 is initiallyat an off-screen location to the right of the UI and slide 532 is at anon-screen location aligned with the target slide. Selecting option 502 bshifts deck 404 c so as to align slide 534 with the target slide, whichalso causes slide 523 to move to an off-screen location to the left ofthe UI.

Runs in Filmstrip View

FIG. 6A shows an example of how identified runs of slides may beconveyed to the user in the filmstrips. In this example, a pair of runindicators 602 a is displayed at the start and end of a three-slide runof filmstrip 404 b. Likewise, a pair of run indicators 602 b isdisplayed at the start and end of a two-slide run of filmstrip 404 c.

Additionally, within each filmstrip, runs of slides can be “collapsed”such that each run is represented by one discrete filmstrip segmentwithin the filmstrip. A selectable collapse option 604 is provided,which the user can use to switch from an un-collapsed group mode to acollapsed group mode. The display element representing a collapsedgroup, in the collapsed mode, occupies an area of the display that isless than the total area of the display occupied by the multiple displayelements representing the multiple slides in that group individually inthe un-collapsed mode.

The collapsed run mode is shown in FIG. 6B. In the collapsed run mode,instead of being represented individually, each run is represented by asingle filmstrip segment, such as filmstrip segments 606 a, 606 brepresenting the runs marked by run indicators 602 a and 602 b in FIG.6A. That is, in the collapsed mode, the filmstrip segments represent amixture of runs and individual slides that are not part of anyidentified run.

SlideScope also identifies runs (see section 3, below) using a number oftechniques, including approximate co-occurrence across multiple decks(i.e., finding sequences which are similar in a number of data streams),and allows these runs to be collapsed, letting the user focus moreeasily on the unique content in slide decks.

Collapsing runs in this way allows more slides to be shown in the samespace—as the slides after the collapsed run are effectively shiftedtowards the collapsed run—with minimal loss of information to the user,because the slides that are collapsed have related content. Collapsingruns is also intuitive, because the aim of run detection is to detectslides that the user is likely to use together, and therefore regardthose slides in one sense as a single unit rather than individualslides.

The user is also more likely to want to incorporate an identified run ofslides into a new or existing deck in one go and, when creating newdecks, a run can be copied across as easily as a single slide. Asillustrated in FIG. 6C, a run of multiple slides can be selected inorder to manipulate that run as a whole, without the user having tomanually select the individual slides in the run. For example, the usercan drag a segment representing a run, such as segment 606 a, into thedeck creation area 310 to create a new deck containing a copy of thatrun. The user can also easily import a copy of the run via the documenteditor 124, into a deck that is currently open for editing in thedocument editor 124. Examples of importing slides via the documenteditor 124 are described later.

Runs are collapsed to the first slide in the run. That is, a version ofthe first slide in the run is displayed within the filmstrip segmentrepresenting the run. Alternatively, SlideScope could instead use aslide it determines to be the most salient slide in the run (the slidewith the richest content, for example), or (space permitting) it coulddepict multiple slides of the run within the segment, by reducing thesize of each individual slide depiction.

All runs may be collapsed simultaneously (an “all or none” approach),with a possible exception that, if there's a match in progress, matchingslides that would be hidden by being collapsed, would not be collapsed.That is, runs containing a slide(s) that matches the current targetslide may not be collapsed.

Alternatively, runs could be collapsed selectively. For example, eachrun could be individually collapsible via the UI. This may be a separateUI option that is provided in addition to an option tocollapse/un-collapse all runs.

Pinning Slides

FIG. 7 shows another feature of the filmstrip GUI, which is that as theuser scrolls through the slide decks far enough that he reaches the endof one of the filmstrips (corresponding to the last slide of that deck),rather than allowing the last slide in the deck to go off-screen as theuser continues to scroll, the filmstrip segment representing the lastslide is pinned.

FIG. 7 shows how the GUI changes over time in response to this scrollaction, i.e. as the user scrolls towards the end of the filmstrips. Deck402 d is the shortest deck, and hence the user reaches the end of thisone first. The views at times t1-t3 show the GUI before the end isreached, and the end is reached at time t4 such that only the last slideis visible. As the user continues to scroll though the remaining slidedecks (times t5-t7), the last slide of deck 402 d remains pinned (i.e.visible) on the GUI, rather than moving off-screen. This is helpful forthe user in keeping track of the slide decks, because it means everyslide deck is visually represented.

Filmstrip—Non-Slides

Generalizing this beyond slides, often multiple data streams representdifferent instances of the “same” content—for example, multiple versionsof a document, or traces for multiple runs of a process. The differencesbetween these streams might be of more interest than the completecontent, and SlideScope provides a means of displaying multiple streamsto make the differences more apparent and easier to explore, by layingthem out alongside each other and then (a) aligning them with respect toa segment of content selected in one trace and (b) identifying commoncontent segments across traces and hiding them from view.

These techniques can be extended to other document and stream types. Forexample, a Word document could be treated as a sequence of paragraphs,and those paragraphs can be aligned and explored as above. For debugtraces, the approximate matching algorithm could be based on key words(and ignoring “noise” features such as time stamps); the user couldalign traces based on some key item, and hide segments of the tracewhich are common across all instances.

Another example is monitoring the behaviour of complex programs, fortest and debug purposes. In the execution of multithreaded programs,each trace might be a little different, with most differences beingharmless, but some are of particular significance. Displaying the tracesside-by-side is the usual way of examining them, but it tends to bedifficult to identify the points of interest. By providing automaticalignment of matching content and (possibly) collapsing of runs withinthe trace log, this task is made significantly easier.

A third example, common in large server farms, is comparing the tracelogs of many servers to be able to identify failures or other unexpectedbehaviour of a subset of machines. Again, there are many log streams inwhich it is difficult to identify the important differences manually.

Slides are aligned based on at least one alignment criterion, which isat least one matching criterion in the above examples. The matchingcriterion can be applied to the content of the slides and/or anyassociated metadata. This can be metadata that is derived from thecontent, or existing metadata that forms part of the slide decks, suchas structural information, timing information, slide type etc.

For example, the system could align slide decks based on slide type(rather than content) or heading level 1 in a Word or HTML document.Another example is a log trace—the system could align by timestamprather than log message content, for example.

Other alignment criteria can also be used, for example if the documentelements are paragraphs and have variable sized display elements, thesystem could align based on paragraph number.

3. Identifying Runs and Other Groups

SlideScope implements various run (or other group) detection heuristics,such as visual comparison elements and cross-document comparison.

Rich document formats tend to encode structural information within theirdata files, to be exploited by the appropriate document editors. Forexample, Word offers a wide range of heading and other style types,which users can employ to describe the document structure somewhatindependently of the contents of the document. However, there also tendto be less formal structural elements in many documents which are notcurrently exploited by editing and viewing applications. As examples,slide decks may include short groups of tightly coupled slides (twopages of a list too long for a single slide; or a complex diagram builtup over several slides), or might have appendix slides which areassociated with particular slides or groups of slides within the mainbody of the deck.

Identification of these groupings can help with reusing content from onedocument to another, and can simplify display of and navigation withinthe document.

SlideScope can detect these structural elements by a combination ofsignals ranging from structure/style labels within the document, textmatching heuristics, visual comparisons, and combinations of theseacross a corpus of similar/related documents.

Reusing content across documents involves locating and then carefullyselecting the desired content first. When SlideScope identifies coherentchunks of content it can (a) bring these to the fore to simplify thelocation task and (b) automatically select the appropriate bit ofcontent, which may be non-contiguous.

Existing document editors do offer some level of structure definition,e.g., sections, paragraphs, diagram element grouping, and the editor cantypically offer quick selection of that unit (e.g., triple click toselect a paragraph) as well as some form of compact structure outlinedisplay (e.g., slide sorter, or Word's document outline). However, theseare tightly coupled to the formal document structure and can't be usedflexibly to detect evolving informal groupings.

SlideScope has a number of mechanisms for detecting contiguous runs, asdescribed below. Any of these can be used individually or in combinationto determine runs statistically, for example to generate a match scorefor each pair of slides as described above. A subset of slides can beidentified as belonging to the same group when their match scores withrespect to each other are above a similarity threshold, for example.This similarity threshold can be lower than the matching threshold usedto locate matching slides for the purposes of searching.

Identified groupings are embodied as grouping data generated bySlideScope. This can be generated on-the-fly, and may not persist. Forexample, the grouping memory can be transient data that is onlygenerated in the processor's memory, without having to store it to disk(i.e. externally). It could be stored externally if desired for lateruse, but this is not essential.

Use of Structure Information

If a user has defined a section, or used section/title slide formats, itcan label the first slide in the section or the first slide after thesection/title slide as the start of a run.

Use of Textual Heuristics

If slides have titles and the text of those titles has significantoverlap (e.g., title starts with the same subset of words, or has anumber followed by the same words, such as “Findings 1” “Findings 2”“Findings (cont)”), SlideScope can designate these as a run.

Overlapping text/objects—if successive slides share a large number ofthe same element, regardless of styling (e.g., a bullet list which isexpanded by a new element on successive slides, or a diagram which haspieces added while others fade into the background, or use of the“morph” animation in recent PowerPoint versions), SlideScope canassociate those slides into a run.

Visual Comparisons

Similar images across slides can also indicate runs. Visual comparisoncan be done in a number of ways, using the same or similar techniquesthat are used to identify matching slides across different decks.

For example, by discarding the top and bottom 10% of a slide (on theassumption that these are likely locations for header and footerinformation which is irrelevant), and producing a fingerprint of theremainder which is compared with all other slides in the same deck toproduce a match score. Alternatives include stripping all styles(removing backgrounds, reducing all text to the same typeface, removingcolours from diagrams, etc.) and then producing the fingerprints; ornormalising the size of diagrams or images on slides such that the samefigure represented in different locations/sizes on different slides willbe recognised as the same.

Comparison Across Decks

SlideScope can apply slide comparisons across a corpus of decks and canidentify slides which are commonly used, and moreover used together, andthose selections can be identified as runs. That is, by inferring thatsides have related content from the fact that they are used together inmultiple decks. Note that, although the comparison may involve comparingslides across decks (as well as slides within decks), it is performed togroup slides within individual decks.

Learned Groupings

In some implementations the user may also modify theautonomously-derived groupings, and the group detection component 206may learn from the user's changes to improve future grouping. Moregenerally, SlideScope can learn from how a user groups slides togethermanually in order to better predict future grouping that the user mightmake, i.e. to predict the user's behaviour. This is a form ofunsupervised learning.

Supervised learning may also be used to learn the user's preferencesregarding slide groupings. For example, in a training phase, the usercould be shown a random or predetermined selection of slides and askedto group them. SlideScope learns from the user's groupings, in order topredict future groupings when the system becomes “live”. These may be“dummy” slides, or real slides taken from the user's decks.

For example, a neural network (or other machine learning model) may betrained to predict slide groupings.

Note that the run definitions may have some “fuzziness” in theirdefinition. For example, in the cross-deck matching, it may be that arun in one deck has an extra slide compared to the “same” run in othersbut, because they share many of the same slides, they can be seen asdifferent variants of the same run.

As noted, in some implementation, SlideScope determines a type of theslide—if a slide is very text heavy, with no or few images, SlideScopecan (a) apply a (fuzzy) text match for that slide and (b) compare itonly with other text heavy slides; whereas if a slide has little text,SlideScope can apply a visual match and only with other text-lightslides. In some implementations, one or more additional comparison modesmay be provided, e.g. another mode for line diagrams or tables, or amode in which animations or videos are broken down to compare and matchtheir constituent frames. A heuristic match which weights the differentmeasures could be used generally, for example by giving more weight totext-based searching for text heavy slides, and more weight to visualmatching for text-light slides.

The cross-deck comparisons are partly an attempt to reveal the authors'previous actions on decks he/she creates. For example, detection of thesame/similar set of slides across several decks is an indication thatthe user did in fact copy those slides from one deck to the other.Editing tools could be augmented to show this reuse directly, thusgiving stronger evidence of runs/related slides than SlideScope'sautonomous inferences. This reuse could be directly encoded within thedocument file formats to make it easier to recover—e.g., each slidecould have a globally unique identifier, with an additional fieldindicating which other slide it was copied from.

Where a title slide appears immediately adjacent to a series of slidesidentified as having related content, SlideScope may identify the titleslides and the related slides as a run. That is, it may assume the titleslide is also part of the run, grouping the title slide in with theslides having related content. Another possibility is that a sectionstart slide found within a usage-defined run could be used to split thatrun into two separate runs.

A slide or other document component may be part of more than one group.For example, they system could implement overlapping or nested runs. Forexample, where a run is split as above, this could result in a runcontaining two nested runs resulting from the split.

Enforced Runs

Another use case for runs (or other groups) is the notion of “enforced”runs. For example, a user may allow another user to use a set of slides,but with the proviso that certain runs or groups of slides can only beused together, and individual slides cannot be removed from that group.This could be used, for example, to ensure that slides are notselectively removed from a group in a way that creates a misleadingmessage (e.g. to prevent the removal of slides that might haveunfavourable statistics, or some other scenario where the removal ofslides form the group would constitute a “lie of omission”).

Less rigid group enforcement could also be used to make it harder for auser to unintentionally remove slides from a group, e.g. by accidentallydeleting them, though the user may be able to override this.

For example, when a user attempts to delete a slide within the documenteditor interface, SlideScope may determine that the slide is part of agroup, and either block the deletion (rigid enforcement), or output awarning that the slide is part of an identified group, and request thatthe user confirms that they do indeed want to delete this slide.

A group can contain a single slide in certain circumstances. Forexample, the system can apply a rule that all section header slides willform the start of a run, but if two section heads are adjacent, thefirst would be a run of a single slide. However, the nature of thegrouping is such that a group can contain multiple slides, and inpractice most groups will contain multiple slides.

4. Slide Re-Use Prediction

Based on knowledge of slide co-occurrence across multiple decks, whensomeone reuses existing slides, SlideScope can offer suggestions for thenext slide/slides they may want to use. The suggestions are not limitedto slides, but could suggest content elements, or references to otherdata sources.

People often create new slide decks from old and, when they reuseslides, they often take them in groups rather than singly. By providinga form of “auto complete” for slides, SlideScope makes reuse quicker andeasier.

Various example interfaces via which slides can be suggested will now bedescribed.

SlideScope harnesses some of the same logic that is used to alignmatching slides to a target slide in the filmstrip view in order tointelligently suggest slides.

This is illustrated conceptually in FIG. 8, which illustrates theprinciples underlying SlideScope's recommendation mechanism. SlideScopeinitially computes a similarity measure between every slide in decksdesignated by the user (e.g., all decks within a certain store/folder),in the manner described above.

Based on this, given a target slide 804 (existing or new) in a currentdeck 802, it first finds all other slides similar to it and, from there,all slides 808 which were used next in decks 806 containing the matchingslides (shown aligned with the target slide 804 in FIG. 8 for ease ofreference). It then clusters those slides 808 on the basis of theirsimilarity and presents an ordered list of candidate slides which theuser may want to insert after the target slide 804.

“Clustering” in this context means collapsing duplicate (or verysimilar) slides within that list, so that SlideScope doesn't showmultiple copies of the same slide because the user happens to have usedthat particular pairing in multiple previous decks. The slides remainingin the list are ordered by popularity. More sophisticated processingcould look at more than just the current slide (e.g., see what slidetypically follows the current and previous slide—a shorter list thanusing just the current slide, but one that might be a strongerpredictor). Slide prediction could also make use of artificialintelligence (Al) techniques, for example by training a slide predictionmodel using a corpus of slides decks.

FIGS. 9A-E show a first example of how the SlideScope GUI can operate tosuggest slides. In this example, the SlideScope functions are accessedvia a first region of the GUI 902, which is displayed alongside a secondregion of the GUI 904 via which the standard functions of the documenteditor 124 are accessed, corresponding to different regions of thedisplay 112.

In FIG. 9A, a presentation is shown as currently open within an editingenvironment provided by the document editor 124. Within the documenteditor region 904, the sequence of slides of the current presentation(or at least a subsequence thereof) is represented, using a “thumbnail”image to represent each slide, in a sidebar region 906. The slide thatis currently being edited is represented over a larger area 908. Withinthe SlideScope GUI 902, the user can request SlideScope to providesuggested slides to follow the current slide. This request can be madein a number of different ways, depending on the implementation, forexample by selecting an option within the SlideScope GUI region 902 forsuggestions based on the current slide, or by dragging and dropping thecurrent slide (e.g. its thumbnail image) into the SlideScope region etc.This triggers the SlideScope operations described below. Alternatively,suggestions for slides to follow the current slide can be madeautomatically, in which case these options can be triggeredautomatically by the user, say, selecting the current slide for editingwithin the document editor region 904.

FIG. 9B shows an example in which the user has selected the currentslide, causing a visual representation 910 of the current slide to berendered in the SlideScope region 910 to convey that it has beenselected successfully.

As shown in FIG. 9C, this causes SlideScope to display suggested slidesfor the current slide, which are chosen by SlideScope as describedabove. In this example, the slides are suggested in a sub-region 912 ofthe SlideScope region 902. In this example, a truncated version of thefilmstrip view as described above is used to present the slides: each ofthe decks containing a suggested slide is represented as a filmstrip,where the filmstrips are aligned on the matching slides, i.e. along onevertical column of the grid, such that the next slides in the decks areall shown in the following columns.

As shown in FIG. 9D, the user can then select one of these slides byselecting the corresponding filmstrip segment (913 in this example), anda selectable option 914 is provided to insert this slide in to the deckbeing edited. Alternatively, it could be incorporated from SlideScopevia any suitable user input means, such as drag and drop etc.

FIG. 9E shows the GUI after this option 913 has been selected. Theselected slide has now been inserted into the deck being edited afterthe target slide, causing a thumbnail image 918 of that slide to beadded to the thumbnail representation at the corresponding position inthe sequence. The newly inserted slide is also now represented withinthe editing area 908 of the document editor, via which it can be editedas the user sees fit.

When a slide is inserted in an existing deck from another deck, it couldbe a version of the slide with styling to match the destination deck, orit could bring along its own master/background/style (i.e. its originalstyling may be maintained).

In this first example, the SlideScope filmstrip interface cooperateswith the document editor interface to make intelligent suggestions. Thisfirst example can be thus seen as a use case of SlideScope's filmstripview functionality, to provide intelligent suggestions whilst a deck isbeing edited.

A second example will now be described with reference to FIGS. 10A-E, inwhich the slide suggestion functions are more closely integrated withthe document editor GUI.

FIG. 10A shows a slide being edited within the document editorinterface, as before. As shown in FIG. 10B, the user can instigate adrop-down menu 1003, for example by right clicking on a thumbnailrepresentation 1002 of the current slide or with some other suitableuser input action. From the drop down menu 1003, as shown in FIG. 100,he can navigate to a list 1004 of suggested slides for the currentslide, where each element of the list constitutes a displayed suggestionthat the user is free to accept or ignore. To provide context, each ofthese is shown in association with the slide that was found to match thecurrent slide, to provide context for the suggestion (i.e. so the usercan understand which it is being suggested)—essentially providing atwo-cell long “snapshot” of the filmstrip view. Alternatively, as shownin FIG. 10D, only the suggested slides may be shown. In any event, theuser can select one of the suggested slides in the list to incorporateit in the current slide deck, thereby accepting the suggestion for thatslide.

As shown in FIG. 10E, where the current slide has been copied fromanother deck, the user may also be able to navigate to a list 1006 ofslides from the deck from which it has been copied, which again the usercan select to incorporate in the current version.

These ideas can be extended to include runs such that SlideScope cansuggest runs to include as well as individual slides, or it can use thefact that the current slide is part of a run to increase the strength ofthe prediction of the other slides in the run.

Predictions can be extended further than a single slide, or backwards aswell as forwards; or the system can use additional structural/heuristicinformation from a slide deck to boost the prediction scores for, e.g.,section headers.

For example, whilst in the above predictions are made based on a singleslide, they could be made from multiple slides. This could be used, forexample, to tune the prediction ordering by taking into account (say)not only the current slide but also one or more previous slide as well(or some other group of slides chosen for whatever reason) and take thatsub-sequence as the query to search the other decks (e.g., deck 1contains A, B, C, and deck 2 B, C, D, deck 3 A, C, F; if B, C are usedas the query, D comes back as a much stronger response than F).

That is, the basic premise—i.e. given a target slide, finding matchingslides in other decks and then locating slides in those other decks thatare associated with the matching slides within those other decks—can beextended to other types of associations, e.g. based on the positions ofthose slides relative to one another in the sequence in question, theircontent (in particular, whether they have related content) or acombination of both.

For example, in the above, slides are suggested when they are the nextslide after a matching slide, such that predictions are based on a fixedoffset of one. However, in alternative implantations, someheuristics/machine learning could vary the offset. An example might bethat a simple prediction would indicate a slide that is blank and theprediction algorithm would skip that slide and suggest the following oneinstead. In this respect, the system looks for slides at a target offsetwhich can be predetermined (fixed at one in the above examples, i.e. italways looks for the next slide) or variable and determined dynamically.This can also be extended to other types of target positionalrelationship, which may be predetermined or determined dynamically inthis manner.

If the user chooses to accept a suggestion to insert a slide fromanother deck, a copy of the suggested slide(s) is inserted into the deckbeing edited in a way that matches the positional relationship betweenthe (original) suggested slide in the other deck with respect to thetarget slide in the deck being edited. The system determines theposition at which the slide is inserted automatically (without the userhaving to specify this position) based on the position of the targetslide in the deck being edited. This determination can be a basiccomputation whereby the computer system simply adds a copy of thesuggested slide as the next side after the target slide. For morecomplex positional relationships, this could involve more complexcalculations by the computer system in order to match this positionalrelationship.

The dataset containing slide co-occurrences could include other(meta)data, which could also be surfaced in the predictions: referencesto source documents, or people, for example.

In some implementations, SlideScope filters out of the candidateprediction list all slides which match content already in the deck beingassembled, so as to avoid recommending slides that are essentiallyduplicates of slides already in the deck. Filtered-out slides are notsuggested for insertion in the document the user is working on.

By way of example, in FIG. 11 (which corresponds to FIG. 8 describedabove) the slides labelled 810 and 812 might be filtered out bySlideScope because the current deck 802 already contains matching slides816.

SlideScope can also convey the confidence it has that the user willselect a particular slide. For example, where a suggestion has beenderived via a slide that very closely matches the current slide, thesuggested slide may be represented in a larger area of the display. Thatis, each suggested slide may be represented in a region of the displaythat has a size that depends on a confidence value associated with thatslide, such that slides the system is more confident the user will wantto select are represented in larger areas. The confidence value can forexample be the matching measure between the target slide and thematching slide, or a value derived from it.

In the above examples, slide suggestion is built on single slide search,although it is a separate operation. It is however possible to implementautomated slide suggestion in other ways. For example, SlideScope couldsimply suggest the n+1th slide from all of a user's previous decks whenthe user wants to insert a slide after the nth in the currently editeddeck (e.g., when the user starts a new deck, it shows him all the firstslides in previous decks; he inserts one of those, and it shows him allthe second slides in response, regardless of context). That is, slidescould be suggested for insertion based simply on their positions intheir respective sequences relate to the target slide in the sequence ofthe current deck.

Suggestions may be suppressed occasionally when appropriate. Forexample, run detection may indicate that the current slide is the end ofa run (at least in some decks) and not predict a next slide (from thosedecks) because this is the end of a part of a “story”.

A “zeroth” slide prediction mechanism may also be provided—when a usercreates a brand new empty slide deck, the system could suggest the mostpopular of his slides (or perhaps just his starting slides) as the firstone to insert. It could even derive some dynamic template from ananalysis of his slide decks to suggest a set of preferred slides.

The user may be able to specify some other signal—e.g., a neighbourhoodof interest—and the system could supply a first slide/template based ondecks in that neighbourhood.

Another use case for suggestions is to provide “on the fly” presentationlogic. For example, SlideScope could provide an option for a user to,say, skip a particular slide or run of slides. To allow this, the usercould input the overall time allotted for the presentation; ifSlideScope detects that the user is running over time, it could suggestthat the user skips a slide/run. The user could mark this slide/run as acandidate for skipping in advance, or the system could identifyruns/slides as candidates for skipping autonomously, for example basedon the user's past behaviour (e.g. by learning from which slides theuser has skipped in the past during presentations). Similar logic couldbe used to condense a presentation in advance. For example, the usercould nominate a deck and SlideScope can suggest runs/slides the usermay want to remove, to create a condensed deck or even suggestslides/runs from other decks that the user may want to add, if he isunder time, using the suggestion logic described above. In this context,SlideScope is suggesting slides/runs to add or remove, where the numberof suggested slides depends on an allotted time as indicated by theuser. Another implementation mechanism would be that the system haslearned about corresponding runs of different lengths and, rather thansuggesting whole runs to remove, it could offer the shorter or longerversions of the “same” run (see above).

Generally, any of the functions described herein can be implementedusing software, firmware, hardware (e.g., fixed logic circuitry), or acombination of these implementations. For example, the components ofFIG. 2 generally represent software, firmware, hardware, or acombination thereof capable of performing the described operations. Inthe case of a software implementation, the module, functionality, orlogic represents program code that performs specified tasks whenexecuted on a processor (e.g. CPU or CPUs). The program code can bestored in one or more computer readable memory devices. The features ofthe techniques described herein are platform-independent, meaning thatthe techniques may be implemented on a variety of commercial computingplatforms having a variety of processors. For example, the system caninclude an entity (e.g. software) that causes hardware of the system toperform operations, e.g., processors, functional blocks, and so on. Forexample, the system may include a computer-readable medium that may beconfigured to maintain instructions that cause the system, and moreparticularly the operating system and associated hardware of the systemto perform operations. Thus, the instructions function to configure theoperating system and associated hardware to perform the operations andin this way result in transformation of the operating system andassociated hardware to perform functions. The instructions may beprovided by the computer-readable medium to the user terminals through avariety of different configurations. One such configuration of acomputer-readable medium is signal bearing medium and thus is configuredto transmit the instructions (e.g. as a carrier wave) to a computingdevice, such as via a network. The computer-readable medium may also beconfigured as a computer-readable storage medium and thus is not asignal bearing medium. Examples of a computer-readable storage mediuminclude a random-access memory (RAM), read-only memory (ROM), an opticaldisc, flash memory, hard disk memory, and other memory devices that mayus magnetic, optical, and other techniques to store instructions andother data. Although the subject matter has been described in languagespecific to structural features and/or methodological acts, it is to beunderstood that the subject matter defined in the appended claims is notnecessarily limited to the specific features or acts described above.Rather, the specific features and acts described above are disclosed asexample forms of implementing the claims.

What is claimed is:
 1. A computer-implemented method of managing firstand second electronic documents, each of the electronic documentscontaining a sequence of content components, the method comprisingimplementing, by a computer system, the following steps: controlling auser interface to display: a first sequence of display elements torepresent the first electronic document, and a second sequence ofdisplay elements to represent the second electronic document, whereineach of the display elements in each of the displayed sequencesrepresents an individual content component or group of contentcomponents of the electronic document represented by that sequence,wherein each of the displayed sequences has an order that matches theorder of the content components in the document it represents, whereinthe first and second sequences are displayed alongside each other, withtheir respective display elements in an initial alignment, to allow aside-by-side comparison of the electronic documents; and in response toa user individually selecting, via the user interface, one of thedisplay elements of the first sequence, identifying one of the contentcomponents of the second electronic document as meeting at least onealignment criterion with respect to the content component of the firstelectronic document represented by the selected display element, andcontrolling the user interface to re-align the sequences, so as to aligna display element of the second sequence, representing the identifiedcontent component, with the selected display element of the firstsequence, without changing the order of the displayed sequences.
 2. Amethod according to claim 1, wherein the computer system identifies thecontent component of the second electronic document as matching thecontent component of the first electronic document, thereby identifyingthe content component of the second electronic document as meeting theat least one alignment criterion with respect to the content componentof the first electronic document.
 3. A method according to claim 2,wherein the content components are identified as matching based on theircontent, based on metadata associated with those content components, ora combination of both.
 4. A method according to claim 1, wherein thefirst and second sequences are displayed in response to a search inputreceived from a user via the user interface, wherein the first andsecond documents are identified by the computer system as matching atleast one search parameter of the search input.
 5. A method according toclaim 4, wherein the first or second electronic document is one ofmultiple duplicate electronic documents that all match the at least onesearch parameter, which are collectively represented by the first orsecond sequence of display elements, whereby the multiple duplicateelectronic documents are all represented by a single sequence of displayelements.
 6. A method according to claim 5, wherein respectiveinformation about each of the multiple duplicate electronic documents isdisplayed in association with that sequence of display elements, toconvey that the sequence represents multiple electronic documents.
 7. Amethod according to claim 4, wherein the search input selects anindividual content component, and the first and second documents areidentified by the computer system as each containing at least onematching content component.
 8. A method according to claim 1, whereinthe first or second electronic document is one of at least twoelectronic documents that the computer system identifies as similarbased on at least one similarity criterion applied to their contentcomponents, wherein the at least two similar electronic documents arerepresented on the user interface by at least two sequences of displayelements, wherein in response to a user input via the user interface,the computer system controls the user interface to replace the at leasttwo sequences with a single sequence of display elements that representsall of the similar electronic documents.
 9. A method according to claim8, wherein the at least one similarity criterion is applied bydetermining a number of matching content components across the at leasttwo electronic documents.
 10. A method according to claim 1, wherein thematching content component is one of a plurality of content componentsof the second electronic document identified by the computer system asmatching the content component of the first electronic document; whereinin response to a user input via the user interface, the computer systemcontrols the user interface to re-align the sequences again, so as toalign another display element of the second sequence, representinganother of the matching content components, with the selected displayelement of the first sequence, without changing the order of thedisplayed sequences.
 11. A method according to claim 10, wherein thecomputer system displays a selectable option to change the alignment ofthe sequences, the user input being instigated by a user selecting theselectable option via the user interface.
 12. A method according toclaim 1, wherein the display elements have uniform sizes.
 13. A methodaccording to claim 1, wherein the display elements have sizes that varyin dependence on the content components they represent.
 14. A methodaccording to claim 1, wherein each of the display elements in each ofthe sequences comprises at least some content of the content componentit represents, whereby that content is displayed as part of thatsequence.
 15. A method according to claim 1, wherein the electronicdocuments are electronic slide decks.
 16. A method according to claim15, wherein each of the content components is an individual slide.
 17. Amethod according to claim 1, wherein the computer system scrolls thoughthe displayed sequences in response to scroll inputs received via theuser interface, wherein upon reaching the start or end of the sequencerepresenting one of the electronic documents, the display elementrepresenting the first or last content component of the electronicdocument remains displayed as the user continues to scroll, whereby theelectronic document continues to be represented as the user continues toscroll.
 18. A method according to claim 1, wherein at least one of thedisplay elements represents a group, which is a contiguous run ofcontent components in one of the sequences of content components, and atleast one of the display elements represents an individual contentcomponent.
 19. A computer system for managing first and secondelectronic documents, each of the electronic documents containing asequence of content components, the computer system comprising: computerstorage configured to hold executable instructions; and at least oneprocessor coupled to the computer storage, the instructions beingconfigured when executed on the at least one processor to implement thesteps of: controlling a user interface to display: a first sequence ofdisplay elements to represent the first electronic document, and asecond sequence of display elements to represent the second electronicdocument, wherein each of the display elements in each of the displayedsequences represents an individual content component or group of contentcomponents of the electronic document represented by that sequence,wherein each of the displayed sequences has an order that matches theorder of the content components in the document it represents, whereinthe first and second sequences are displayed alongside each other, withtheir respective display elements in an initial alignment, to allow aside-by-side comparison of the electronic documents; and in response toa user individually selecting, via the user interface, one of thedisplay elements of the first sequence, identifying one of the contentcomponents of the second electronic document as meeting at least onealignment criterion with respect to the content component of the firstelectronic document represented by the selected display element, andcontrolling the user interface to re-align the sequences, so as to aligna display element of the second sequence, representing the identifiedcontent component, with the selected display element of the firstsequence, without changing the order of the displayed sequences.
 20. Acomputer program product managing first and second electronic documents,each of the electronic documents containing a sequence of contentcomponents, the computer program product comprising computer readableinstructions stored on a computer readable storage medium and configuredwhen executed to implement the steps of: controlling a user interface todisplay: a first sequence of display elements to represent the firstelectronic document, and a second sequence of display elements torepresent the second electronic document, wherein each of the displayelements in each of the displayed sequences represents an individualcontent component or group of content components of the electronicdocument represented by that sequence, wherein each of the displayedsequences has an order that matches the order of the content componentsin the document it represents, wherein the first and second sequencesare displayed alongside each other, with their respective displayelements in an initial alignment, to allow a side-by-side comparison ofthe electronic documents; and in response to a user individuallyselecting, via the user interface, one of the display elements of thefirst sequence, identifying one of the content components of the secondelectronic document as meeting at least one alignment criterion withrespect to the content component of the first electronic documentrepresented by the selected display element, and controlling the userinterface to re-align the sequences, so as to align a display element ofthe second sequence, representing the identified content component, withthe selected display element of the first sequence, without changing theorder of the displayed sequences.